Pervasive The OLE DB provider “MSDASQL” for linked server reported an error. The provider reported an unexpected catastrophic failure.

Question

MSSQL 2016 link to a Pervasive server. It can see the DBs on the Pervasive database, and tables but when you do a select

SELECT *
        FROM 
        OPENQUERY(LinkedServer, 'SELECT * FROM DB.Table')

I get Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The OLE DB provider "MSDASQL" for linked server "LinkedServer" reported an error. The provider reported an unexpected catastrophic failure. Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider "MSDASQL" for linked server "LinkedServer". I checked MSDASQLprovider allows in line process, and port. Still nothing Thoughts folks. ??

Answer 1

Had this issue when upgrading SQL Server from SQL2014 to SQL2016 or later. Also if you install it on a new machine. The root cause is that the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers has changed. It now has more ISO and other ODBC features supported. This is a breaking change for some ODBC connections.

This driver ( MSDASQL ) is used to wrap an ODBC connection on the server, in this case, to the pervasive database and allow it to act as a linked server. The wrapper allows both OPEN Query functionality as well as standard linked query calls.

The issue with the change is that the new wrapper is sending extra data that is not being handled if you are using ODBC driver versions 11 or below for query activity. It can not handle the additional information and will return an error on execution. It will be able to connect, however. I could see all of the tables but couldn't query them.

Version 12 of the pervasive ODBC driver will work for query only, but Open Query will not work. You will continue to get "unexpected catastrophic failure" on open query updates.

I recommend you upgrade to version 13.3. This release from Actian will support both selects and updates and will solve the Open Query error. I do not know if you will need support from Actian for the licensing of the driver.